


So Easy In The Evening

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-06
Updated: 2012-03-06
Packaged: 2017-11-01 14:10:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock tries to conform for John over dinner, and John despairs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Easy In The Evening

It’s a dinner like any other at _Jasmine Rice_. John sits opposite Sherlock and tries not to spill any sweet and sour sauce on the tablecloth, and Sherlock watches him eat pancake rolls with a disinterested eye. The conversation is slow, often non-existent, but the silence is a comfortable one. It’s not until a group of loud middle-aged women sit in the booth next to them that the trouble begins.

  
John can tell right off that the blasts of laughter are getting to Sherlock. His eyes grow colder and slide away from John’s plate of food to his own hands, clasped tight next to the lit candle. They’re warning signs of an imminent explosion brought from sneering lips, and so John nudges Sherlock’s ankle with his foot.   
  
“No,” is all he says, firmly, and Sherlock’s eyebrows knit together.   
  
“What?”   
  
“Don’t,” he says, looking pointedly at the divider between the booths, the raucous behind it unrelenting. “Don’t start – I don’t know,  _analysing_ them so loudly they have to leave.”   
  
Sherlock lets out a delicate cough that’s suspiciously like a scoff, and looks away across the restaurant. His fingers unclasp, though, which is a something of a start. It’s not often that he follows John’s orders without a scrap of hesitancy and John always feels his chest puff with pride when it happens.   
  
The silence grows more strained.   
  
John starts on the prawn crackers placed in the centre of the table. They’re tasteless things, the texture weird against the silk of his tongue, but he eats them just to hear the satisfying  _crunch_ of them between his teeth.   
  
“These are good,” he lies around a mouthful of them. “You should try one.”   
  
“I’m fine,” Sherlock replies, lightly. He doesn’t look at John as he speaks and it doesn’t take another genius to work out that he’s hurt. John is far from a genius, but he is a man, and a man who lives and breathes the world Sherlock Holmes has created for him. By now that look is one he’s accustomed to, even if experiencing it more than once does nothing to lessen the guilt he feels. It’s inexplicable guilt, yes, but guilt nonetheless.   
  
After a few more minutes of loud crunching and withering looks – and the women next to them making increasingly drunken catcalls at the one very nervous looking waitress – John finally lays down his knife and fork and clears his throat.   
  
“Is something the –“   
  
“I don’t understand why you –“   
  
Their voices clash and tussle in the air, and both of them relent at the same time. John nods at Sherlock to continue, but Sherlock still isn’t looking at him. His eyes are now fixed stubbornly on the ceiling and the lines around his mouth are even tighter. John breaks a prawn cracker in half, popping half in his mouth and offering the other across the table in some kind of peace offering.   
  
Sherlock’s eyes drift down to it and the muscles around his mouth twitch, before he’s sliding around the leather bench framing the table, pressed up against John. John moves back against the wall automatically, his fingers curling into the clean white tablecloth. “Um. What are you doing?”   
  
“I don’t understand why you always have to insist on me  _behaving_ , John.”   
  
John frowns. Sherlock doesn’t move away, just stares at him with one elbow resting by John’s shoulder along the edge of the booth. The dark of his jacket jars with the pale yellow of the wall.   
  
“I don’t – I never  _insist_ on you behaving. I always let you do – your thing. It’s just been a long couple of days and I wanted a nice, normal dinner for once.”   
  
He regrets the sentiment the moment it’s passed his lips. The look in Sherlock’s eye is frozen, reticent, and John closes his mouth and shakes his head with a grimace. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that, I just –“   
  
“I know what you meant,” Sherlock interrupts him, voice kinder than John expected it to be. He lets his hand fall to his side and leans back, letting out a long sigh. John can see his mind working towards some sort of solution, and he resigns himself to a dinner that is decidedly not normal after all.   
  
“John,” Sherlock says, eyes fixed straight ahead, “put your hand in my trousers.”   
  
John stares at him and then laughs, blunt and disbelieving. “You’re not serious.” A pause. A very long pause. “ _Please_ tell me you’re not serious.”   
  
“I’m perfectly serious,” Sherlock answers and if there’s a hint of pomposity in his voice, John dutifully ignores it. “It’s a simple request. You’ll see what I mean.”   
  
“You mean about what?” John asks, though whatever Sherlock’s purpose is here it’s the very last question on his mind. He can’t move any further away from Sherlock without ducking underneath the table itself. Part of him actually wants to escape that way, but another knows that it would be quite an insult to Sherlock’s … dignity? Ego? John isn’t sure, but right now he’s not sure about  _anything_ .   
  
“You’ll see,” Sherlock says in all of his maddening ambiguity, and he reaches across to take John’s wrist in his hand. He curls his fingers around it, lightly, and they just sit there for a few moments with nothing but the meagre contact. John opens his mouth to say something but soon shuts it, teeth clacking together, slimy from the sauce.   
  
“I don’t understand,” is all he says, eventually, and it comes out helpless. It comes out as a plea. Sherlock’s eyes brighten at the show of weakness, but whether out of triumph or tenderness John can’t tell. “This isn’t - nobody  _does_ this sort of thing. I don’t care what sort of experiment this is, or what kind of point you’re supposed to be proving. I’m not doing it.”   
  
Sherlock gives him a pointed look and then releases his wrist. He doesn’t physically move away but John thinks he may as well have; he feels at once a lot less flustered and a lot more alone.   
  
“Fine.”   
  
Sherlock drums his fingers against the table, slowly, staring out across the restaurant.   
  
John reaches for a pancake roll and bites it in half. He eats it as noisily and obnoxiously as he can, as though he can’t hear Sherlock breathing heavily through his nostrils mere inches away. After a while he starts to watch John eat again. Sometimes John gets frustrated by it -- if Sherlock is so  _fascinated_ with the process, why not just  _eat_ \-- but tonight he bites his tongue. He’s not sure what’s going on in that head of Sherlock’s, but it’s something new and unpredictable.   
  
A few crumbs land on the lapel of John’s jacket. Sherlock’s hand is there to wipe them away before John can even react, and he starts. Sherlock often watches him, yes, but he never touches. At least, never for something so trivial as crumbs landing on cloth.   
  
“What --?”   
  
“Distracting,” is all Sherlock says, withdrawing his hand and laying it flat against the table. John stares at his fingers, long and pale, and then at his face, also pretty long and pale, and he sighs, giving in.   
  
“Go on then. Tell me what your big plan was.”   
  
“My plan? What plan?”   
  
“Why you wanted me to - for God’s  _sake_ , Sherlock, it happened two minutes ago. The big point you were trying to prove that involved me sticking my hand in your trousers.”   
  
“Oh. That.” The corner of Sherlock’s mouth twitches and John feels instantly annoyed, and instantly curious. “You were complaining about my certain lack of … normality. I wanted to prove you wrong.”   
  
“How on earth would that prove me wrong?”   
  
“You won’t know unless you do it,” Sherlock says, mysteriously, and John sighs big and heavy.   
  
“You do realise that usually somebody doing - doing  _that_ for another person is usually pretty …” he struggles for words, because how does one begin to explain sexual acts to a man like Sherlock? He clears his throat. “It’s usually something people do because of affection. When they’re friends, at least, it’s not usually something that people just  do unless …”   
  
It’s useless, he realises at once. Sherlock, for all his wilful ignorance of certain subjects, is obviously mindful of the conventions of handjobs between friends. He’s a grown man, and he’s deciphered more than one case involving affairs and sexual misconduct. Whether he’d ever conform to such conventions is another matter entirely, and one that is a complete mystery to John.   
  
Sherlock gives him a rather odd look, decidedly less patronising than John expected. Then he says, rather gently, “Yes, John. I’m well aware.”   
  
It clearly an admission of sorts and for a while John just stares at him with his mouth open, much like he tends to do when Sherlock gets carried away on cases, diving straight up into genius and leaving the rest of them to blink confusedly in his dust. John often tries to follow him, and sometimes he does, but most of the time he’s left staring upwards in awe and wondering how he doesn’t fall.   
  
“You’re,” John frowns, “aware. Oh.”   
  
Sherlock seems to sigh his reply, the “yes” he gives barely audible over the general hum of conversation. He looks utterly unperturbed, watching John calmly. His eyes are perhaps a little too sharp to pass as merely glancing, but a little too soft to be intent.   
  
John Watson has never been a coward. He’s never stepped back from duty or desire when it’s waved unceremoniously in his face. He’s been scared before, yes, any man in the line of fire has, but he’s never backed down and he’s certainly never run away.   
  
He looks down at his hand and flexes his fingers. There’s some sauce on the side of his little finger and he sucks it off, quickly. Sherlock makes a small sound in the back of his throat, something like a cough, and John starts to actually consider his request for the first time. Nervously clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, he glances sidelong at Sherlock.   
  
“Everyone would see,” he protests, more to himself than Sherlock.   
  
That doesn’t, of course, stop Sherlock from answering.   
  
“We’re in the corner. Nobody is going to see anything behind this tablecloth and if you’re that worried, you can always use a napkin to hide everything.” Sherlock sounds far too calm telling John the easiest way for him to give an undetected handjob, and his fingers are quick and deft as they untuck the hem of his shirt from his trousers. He looks at John, then. “There’s no - pressure, John. If you don’t want to --”   
  
“Who said I don’t to?” John interrupts him, quickly, and for the first time Sherlock’s face betrays some surprise. He searches John’s expression for some sign of a lie and when he finds none he sits back, regarding him with something close to approval.   
  
“Oh,” he says, quietly. Approvingly. His movement causes his untucked shirt to ride up, revealing a slither of pale skin. John tries not to stare; instead, he tucks into his meal. It’s getting cold now, but the waitress isn’t looking over and nobody around them seems to have noticed that he’s been neglecting his food in favour of stilted conversation. Sherlock is still watching him.   
  
“This is good. Good. You should try some,” he says, just to speak, around a mouthful of duck. He swallows and adds, “If you want me to prove your point you might want to actually unzip your trousers.”   
  
Sherlock hums his approval and John wipes at his mouth with a napkin. He can hear the unzip of Sherlock’s fly as though it were the only sound in the place. Sherlock shifts on the leather bench as he pull his trousers and underwear halfway down his thighs. John’s attempts at looking anywhere but at Sherlock’s crotch fail and his eyes trail down from the small smile on his lips, down his shirt, to his --   
  
He sucks in breath, sharp.   
  
There have been many occasions that John has seen Sherlock naked. Sometimes he forgets that Sherlock is prone to wandering around the flat half-dressed and he walks in the kitchen to find him draped in a pathetically small white towel. He’s seen glimpses and flashes of almost all of Sherlock’s body, and all he’s ever done is sighed pointedly and ignored it.   
  
But now, seeing Sherlock half-hard, seeing the firm milky-white of his thighs, well, a heat creeps up his neck and his mind momentarily jolts out of place. He stares for a second longer and then clears his throat again, gruffly, wrapping his fingers around Sherlock and giving an unceremonious jerk.   
  
Sherlock breathes in sharp through his teeth and it makes John happy to have taken him by surprise. He’s never done this to any other man before, but he’s done it to himself plenty and when he smooths the ring of his fingers from the base of Sherlock’s cock to the head of it, it’s with practised ease.   
  
As he jerks Sherlock silently (and tries to wrap his head around what he’s doing, what is he  doing ), he carries on eating dinner with his free hand. It’s tricky to do both but he’s always had steady fingers, and when he bites into a chunk of duck he focuses mostly on keeping his wrist moving and his arm as still as possible.   
  
Sherlock’s looks and sounds of surprise are long gone; his face is impassive again, impressively so, and John takes it as a challenge. Even as John brings him to full hardness his eyes only brighten a little, his breathing still unlaboured, still unbothered. It’s John who is breathing a little heavier than usual and he wants to blame it on the single half-drunk glass of white wine he ordered with his meal -- he’d like to blame  _everything_ on it, really, but he’s not one for blaming anything on alcohol after dealing with his sister for so long -- but he knows the reason lies in the absurdity of this whole situation.   
  
It’s mad, he thinks, it’s absolutely mad that nobody at all is looking at them. At least, they’re not until Sherlock raises his hand and obnoxiously clicks his fingers in the general direction of the long-suffering waitress. John freezes up, the entirety of him stilling with his hand halfway up the length of Sherlock. He’s thrown, momentarily. “What exactly are you doing?”   
  
“I’m being normal.”   
  
The reply is so nonsensical and frustrating that John resumes the movement of his hand with rather more force. Sherlock’s hips lift upward off the bench automatically, and when John laughs low in his throat Sherlock actually has the decency to look at least a  _little_ embarrassed. Rather, his eyes close momentarily and he groans, before they reopen and his expression is neutral once more.   
  
After a moment the waitress appears, and John almost loses his nerve. The poor girl is in her early twenties and evidently exhausted with ignorant customers, but she approaches with an attempt at a smile. Sherlock picks up John’s menu between two fingers and browses through it whilst John pauses, practically hearing his own pulse as he tries to work out whether or not the waitress suspects anything.   
  
He smooths his fingers back down Sherlock’s cock and watches her. She doesn’t look at him, or the slight movement of his arm, and John wonders why he ever bothered to doubt Sherlock’s confidence of the angle and the tablecloth and the dark shadows of the restaurant.   
  
“I believe I’ll eat after all,” Sherlock is telling her, and John isn’t really listening as he picks through what’s left on his plate and avoids the waitress’s eye. Damn Sherlock,  _damn_ his complete and utter control even now, even as he --   
  
“What would you like, Sir?”   
  
“I’ll have the same as my companion,” Sherlock says, and John rubs the pad of his thumb over the head of him. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Sherlock’s thighs tense under the table and he senses the tremble in Sherlock’s voice before he hears it, “I - sweet and sour --  _John_ !”   
  
The last word comes out affronted and far too loud, and as the waitress’s eyebrows raise up into her fly-away hair John’s hand moves back to his own lap as fast as it can. He wants to apologise, stupidly, but instead he just wrinkles his forehead and frowns at Sherlock like he can’t still feel the ghost of Sherlock’s  _cock_ hot and heavy in his hand. Sherlock is staring at him like they don’t have an audience, and though his mouth is set in a firm line and his eyes glitter no more than usual, his cheeks are slightly pink.   
  
John is suddenly, absurdly proud of himself, and he fights a grin as he scoops some rice up onto his fork.   
  
“Never mind,” Sherlock says, with a vague wave in the direction of the young girl. “I’ll just have a glass of water.”   
  
“Okay,” she replies, doubtfully, and she casts a strange look over her shoulder at him as she walks away.   
  
Sherlock watches her until she’s disappeared into the kitchens, and then he rounds on John, pressing up against him again. This time John stays firmly in his spot, still smiling a little smugly as he asks, “Is something wrong?”   
  
“No, nothing’s wrong.” His gaze is travelling over John’s face searchingly but John just stares right back. He studies the blood that has risen beneath the skin of Sherlock’s cheeks and after a moment takes Sherlock firm in his hand and starts jerking him off again, this time with more confidence and less care of the movement of his arm.   
  
He thinks of how different this could be. They could be at home with Sherlock lying back on the bed, legs spread wide with John between them. Maybe the romance of it would make him feel more at ease as he’s certainly pleasured more than one woman in such a setting before -- but this is  _Sherlock_ , and the difference in setting and the pure absurdity of it all somehow makes perfect sense.   
  
It’s not the time, however, to be thinking of anything more conventional when he’s still trying to keep up the pretence of eating dinner. The waitress brings Sherlock his water and leaves to tend to a disgruntled couple in the opposite corner of the restaurant.   
  
Sherlock raises the glass to his lip and sips at it. His eyes stay on John and when he lays the glass back onto the table, his eyebrows are raised. It’s almost like he’s challenging John to do all the damage he can, to see if John can break that distanced reserve. John resists sighing but he accepts the challenge loyally; his fingers tighten, his wrist starts to burn with the increase of movement. “Sherlock,” he says, experimentally, “I hope you know how –  _ridiculous_ this is.”   
  
“I know,” Sherlock replies, quietly. His fingers twitch. “I had hoped that I –  _ahh_ \-- ”   
  
His eyes close. John stares at him, turns his whole body so he can look directly at him, and he marvels the blush that spreads across his cheek and the way his mouth falls open. He’s never been particularly  _romantic_ , but the girls he’s been with have never complained about his sexual performance, and he’s always known when they’re close thanks to red cheeks and throaty moans that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.   
  
But to see Sherlock unravel beneath his hands is something different indeed. There’s a timidity to his passion that’s both unsure and confident; he does not look embarrassed by the way he’s moving up into John’s fist now, but everything is so – so  unpractised , so obviously new, and when he licks desperately at his lips there’s almost something close to worry in his gaze.   
  
John is still fighting a rather inappropriate grin.   
  
“I can’t pretend to be eating for much longer,” John murmurs, eyeing the few stray noodles and smears of sauce left on his plate. He lets his fingers fan wide for a moment over Sherlock’s abdomen, curling them in the dust of hair there, and Sherlock groans low in his throat. His hand catches John’s in his own and curls it back around his cock.   
  
“Then  _hurry up_ ,” he says through gritted teeth, and John laughs for a second before he sees how serious Sherlock is.   
  
“Okay. Ok ay ,” John says in his most placating voice, one usually reserved for Sherlock’s sullen fits of boredom or despair. He doesn’t draw it out or feign interest in his dinner anymore. He just – just  _moves_ his hand and stares in wonder as Sherlock seems to lose himself completely.   
  
It amazing that nobody else is staring. Sherlock is always conspicuous, John thinks, but now he’s sprawled out across the leather seats and flushing red, his mouth perpetually half-open. John crosses his legs to try and ease the swelling between them as Sherlock reacts to his every touch. He’s completely in control of the man at his side for perhaps the first time, and as he squeezes his fist experimentally on the upstroke he feels his own jolt of pleasure when Sherlock groans low in his throat.   
  
“You okay?” John asks, quietly, and Sherlock just nods. He grabs at John’s wrist with firm fingers and guides his hand  _faster_ .   
  
It dawns on John with a rapidity that flips his stomach over – Sherlock is reacting with such fervour to his every touch that it’s unsettling, but the reason for it might not be in John’s skill or the fact that it’s John himself. It’s the first John has known of anybody touching him in this way, at least since they’ve known each other, and maybe it’s  _that_ that is undoing him so completely.   
  
As John accepts that it’s not him, it’s not him at all, it’s just the act of it, Sherlock’s second hand finds its way to his jaw. John stares at him as he feels the fingers dusting clean-shaven skin, and Sherlock stares right back at him. “Sherlock,” he says, quietly, squeezing his fist tight around him, and he breaks the gaze. Still nobody is looking, but the waitress is nearby and could come to collect his empty plate at any moment.   
  
“ _Sherlock_ \--”   
  
Sherlock’s head bows suddenly, his dark hair tickling John’s nose and filling his nostrils with the minty scent of his shampoo. His hand drops from John’s jaw and instead grabs at his shirt, as he starts to come. He stops himself from moaning with teeth pressed into lower lip, but when he lifts his head his face is red and his forehead damp.   
  
“I --” he starts, breathlessly, urgently, and then he falls silent. His eyes don’t leave John’s face as he starts to zip himself back up.   
  
John reaches for the provided napkin and wipes his hands on it, slowly. He stares down at the table and listens to the party of women noisily tuck into their dinner. It’s mad how his world has shifted, and yet how it stays the same; the man across the restaurant is still laughing in that sycophantic way that makes John’s skin crawl; the waitress is still tiredly collecting dishes; the stars are still shining. He’s jerked Sherlock off and they’re both decidedly still breathing.   
  
“Right,” he says, and his voice is full of a confidence he certainly doesn’t feel, full of the promise of an impending decision that will never come. “Right. That was, er --”   
  
By his side Sherlock shifts in his seat, wiping at his trousers. Any other man might look sheepish but Sherlock certainly isn’t any other man, and he simply  _looks_ , looks like himself, looks right at John even when John is fighting to keep looking away.   
  
Whatever Sherlock might say, John  _isn’t_ a stupid man and he knows what has just passed between them, and he knows that his heart is racing just like it was after that first wild goose chase around London after a taxi driver neither of them knew to feel threatened by. He knows that he is a man, and Sherlock is a man, and he knows that anything he might have felt as  _normalcy_   in him was swept out of his life the moment Sherlock was swept into it. He knows that any notion of a functional relationship between them is far too far-fetched for Sherlock to wrap his head around, and he knows that despite all this - or perhaps because of it - he’s still by Sherlock’s side in this dingy Chinese restaurant.   
  
He’s not freaking out. That takes him by surprise, but he embraces it. He’s  _not freaking out_ .   
  
“John.” Pause. “I -”   
  
“No, don’t. Save it, Sherlock.”   
  
“ _John_ .”   
  
John stands up and thanks whatever he can that the heat between his legs has subsided. That can wait, at least for now. Clearing his throat, he pointedly doesn’t look at his companion, and instead peels a couple of tenners from the wallet in his jacket. “There,” he says, placing them carefully in the centre of the table, next to Sherlock’s glass of water. He can see Sherlock’s fingerprints, slightly smudged, dotted around it and his mouth goes a bit dry.   
  
Alright. Maybe he is freaking out, just a little.   
  
“I’ll see you at home,” John says, and he doesn’t have to look back to know Sherlock is staring at him. He passes the waitress and murmurs a quick thanks to her, pushing hands - and his tired wrist - deep into his jacket pocket as he walks out into the night air.   
  
He’s reminded of something his mum used to tell him when he was little. She’d warn him in her most stern tones not to wear a coat indoors, because when he went outdoors he’d have nothing to wrap up in and he’d be freezing. He used to ignore her back then because  _outside_ was all that mattered, running after Harry and pretending he had the power to arrest her for crimes he could barely pronounce, but when he hit his teens he started to follow her advice.   
  
John’s not really been following anybody’s advice since he got back from the war, except when he finds himself berated and dismissed until he does things the way  _Sherlock_ wants him to.   
  
He wishes he’d not worn his jacket indoors at the meal, even if the heating in the place had been a bit off. He’s freezing now and as he walks he watches his breath spiral out and up. Maybe storming out without even explaining what was the matter was childish of him, and maybe he should have stayed around long enough to tell Sherlock that he rather liked giving him a handjob and if it’s not too much trouble he’d quite like to continue the habit, but it didn’t really seem appropriate.   
  
John stops walking, outside a bakery with the lights all switched off, and laughs, loud and free. An old man across the road walks a little faster but John pays him no attention. Being appropriate should have been a worry  _before_ wanking Sherlock off, and not after, and now that he’s laughing he can’t stop until his sides start to hurt and his back is pressed up against the bakery window.   
  
He runs both hands over his face and thinks about Sherlock. The point of the whole - whole  _incident_ is no clearer to him than when Sherlock first brought it up, but John doesn’t care anymore. He’s always been a thrill-seeker and he’s not sure he’s ever felt a thrill like this before, and if it happens to negate his insistence that he’s straight, so be it.   
  
John Watson knows himself too well to even pretend to be a coward.   
  
Pushing himself off from the bakery window, he walks back in the direction he’s come. The cold doesn’t affect him like it did before; if his cheeks are a little red, he’ll later blame it on the chill and not the resolution in his gut, but that’s neither here nor there. He thinks about Sherlock and a little about what his mother might say about running into this new kind of danger, and he finds that he doesn’t give a damn. Danger is what warms him now, it’s what always has.   
  
He reaches Baker Street in a matter of minutes and recognises the tall figure stood outside their building at once. He slows when he sees Sherlock and eventually stops just before him, drawing in breath quick and deep.   
  
“Sherlo --”   
  
“You look excited,” Sherlock says, and it’s an observation, not an analysis, for which John is grateful. There’s a hint of amusement in it, too. “Hello.”   
  
“Hello,” John says, or rather spits out, the word teetering on the edge.   
  
He flexes his fingers, remembers what they were wrapped around mere minutes ago.   
  
“Are you --”   
  
“I’m fine,” John dismisses, quickly.   
  
Sherlock narrows his eyes a little as he watches John. His hands are in his pockets and his back is straight and tall. He doesn’t look anything like the mess John had left in the restaurant and it’s reassuring to know that he hasn’t  _actually_ broken him. John shifts his weight from left foot to right, practically burning with the desire to just do something, to say something, anything, but Sherlock speaks before he can even try to find the words.   
  
“I’m afraid my plan rather backfired,” he comments, lightly, and that stalls John. Sherlock quirks half a smile. “My plan to appear --” he frowns a little, forehead becoming all creases “-- ‘normal’. That’s what you seemed to want from the dinner, and so I thought if I carried on as normal whilst you --”   
  
Sherlock doesn’t quite falter, but he comes close to it. John really wants to kiss him.   
  
“I suppose I was wrong,” Sherlock admits, though he doesn’t sound too pleased about it.   
  
John laughs. The knot in his chest starts to untie itself. “You could be a little more grateful, you know.”   
  
With something of a smile, Sherlock raises his eyes to the sky momentarily, and meet John’s once more. John wants to think about how they’ve caught the starlight, wants to wax lyrical prose about how maddening they are, but he’s never been one for poetry and when he takes Sherlock’s scarf in his hands and pulls him close he’s not being gentle.   
  
When their mouths meet them both fumble. The heel of Sherlock’s presses too hard against John’s cheek and John’s teeth click together when he moves too fast, but they kiss anyway. John has to push up on the balls of his feet and keep Sherlock at his height with firm hands on the tassles of his scarf and he has to get used to the feeling of the flat of Sherlock’s chest against his and he can’t believe he ever could have waited so long.   
  
It’s Sherlock who breaks the kiss, but he keeps his head bowed and wraps his fingers around those at his scarf. “John,” he says, “I --”   
  
“I know,” John says, because Sherlock’s not the only one who can read a person by flushed cheeks and wide eyes. They kiss once more on the street and three times on the stairs. John stops thinking somewhere in the middle of the eleventh, this one slow and careful and languid, and he doesn’t care at all.


End file.
